The Move
by namjai
Summary: Chris helps move his young cousin Penelope and his grandfather Victor to a different city and a new life out of harm's way. And over breakfast, the seed of a plan to save Wyatt is planted.


_Disclaimer: The WB and some other people own_ Charmed_, not me._

_Author's Note: Written for the "I Can Do Better!" Challenge: The Original Character. In a nutshell, the challenge was to create an original character who is not a Mary-Sue (along with some other "dares" I only sort of met — hence that silly musical reference). I took the opportunity to develop a minor OC for a longer fic that's percolating in my brain right now. Young Penelope may yet appear again. For now, here's her one-shot tale, set in the original, evil!Wyatt future:_

**The Move  
**

"Ow!" Chris exclaimed seconds after he orbed in with the cat, who dug her claws into Chris's arms and stomach before propelling herself out of his arms and under the bed. "Damn it, cat!"

"She's not used to orbing all over the place, let alone across the country," thirteen-year-old Penelope Halliwell chided her older cousin. She crouched down to look under the bed and commiserate with the cat, who refused to come out. "Poor Tigerlily."

"Poor me," Chris said, inspecting the reddening scratches on his arms. "Well," he added, "that's the last of it."

Penelope looked around her new room, which was crammed with unpacked boxes, and announced, "This sucks."

Chris responded with a quiet, sympathetic, "Yeah." He had just finished orbing her and the remainder of her belongings from San Francisco to Boston. After Grandpa Victor bought the house, he had moved most of his and Penelope's stuff the traditional way — employing a moving company making a killing off of those fleeing the city for safer havens. Penelope had stayed with Chris and his girlfriend Bianca just a few days longer while Grandpa made the place livable, and then Chris took Penelope to her new home.

The piled boxes, the unfamiliar view from her window, the room's disgustingly cutesy wallpaper, her cat cowering under the bed — Penelope felt a lump in her throat as she said through gritted teeth, "I hate him."

She waited for Chris's usual reply: "No, you don't." Then she could launch into her litany of woes that she would lay at Wyatt's feet: The Magic School was closed, and not that she cared so much about school, but all her friends were gone, most of them moved out of town, just like she had now … She was sure if she thought about it long enough, she could blame her mom's death on him. Maybe her dad's, too — even if Wyatt had only been ten years old when that happened, it was probably his fault somehow.

This time, though, Chris did not say anything. Some tree branches waving outside the window seemed to have caught his full attention. Maybe he was tired of hearing Penelope's tirades against his brother. Or maybe …

"Do you hate him now too?" she asked.

"What? Um … no. No."

Something in her was relieved to hear it. There was too much change going on right now. Some things ought to stay the same.

Chris continued, "Look, I'd better get back —"

He was interrupted by Grandpa Victor, who had appeared at the bedroom door. "Why don't you spend the night here?" Chris opened his mouth to protest, but Grandpa cut him off: "You can help Penelope get settled. And give yourself a rest, from … everything there. Come on, just one night."

Chris relented with a small nod. "Just let me go back and tell Bianca. Then I'll be back. I promise."

* * *

The afternoon wore into evening as the two cousins worked their way through her boxes. It was a slow process. Chris didn't know where she wanted everything to go, and she had to stop to coo over various family artifacts that surfaced from some of the older boxes, ones that contained her mom's belongings.

Sometime after dinner — Grandpa let them order pizza — she completely gave in to this impulse when she came across a photo album inscribed with Mom's name. She lay across the bed, Tigerlily purring at her side, as she examined the photos. Most of the album's early ones showed Mom with Aunt Paige, Uncle Leo and Aunt Piper — an Aunt Piper who was noticeably pregnant until, suddenly, the pictures were overtaken with seemingly endless snapshots of a little blonde baby. Wyatt. Penelope snorted in disgust and flipped pages forward, looking for someone else, but her search turned up very little.

"How come there aren't any pictures of you in here?" she finally said indignantly.

Chris, sitting cross-legged amidst the clutter on the floor, looked up from one of her old spell books from school. "What?"

"There are, like, five million pictures of Wyatt, and maybe two — yeah, exactly two of you as a baby in this album."

Chris stared, open-mouthed, for a moment before returning to the book, saying, "They just took more pictures of Wyatt, I guess."

She heard the bitterness in his voice and regretted saying anything. The page with baby Chris was followed by a few blank pages — and that was the end. "Look," she offered hopefully. "Mom just ran out of space. I'm sure you're in the next album."

"Maybe," he said, only pretending — she could tell — to be absorbed in that stupid schoolbook.

She let him be, and slammed the photo album closed, startling the cat, who leapt off the bed and under it again. Penelope laid back, staring at the ceiling. Such a great find of something of her mom's, until Wyatt ruined everything. She hated him. She held her right arm up in the air above her face and flexed the wrist, trying to see if she could get it to hurt still. Her first year at Magic School, when she was only six years old, Wyatt had broken it.

Chris would say, "It was an accident. He was trying to defend me against a bully, and you were there and just — got caught in the crossfire. He didn't mean to hurt you."

"I don't care!" Penelope would reply. "I got slammed against the wall and he broke my wrist." She didn't remember much about the first grade, but she remembered that. And she had been scared of Wyatt ever since. Eventually, the grown-ups and his brother Chris had learned to get scared of him, too. She just knew it first.

"It's almost midnight," Chris said. "We probably ought to get to sleep."

"Okay," she muttered. "See you in the morning." It was only after he shut the door behind him and she was alone that the tears started to stream down her face, into her hair and her pillow.

* * *

The bright morning improved both Penelope's mood and her resolve. She came down to the kitchen, where Grandpa was assembling something like breakfast from the scant groceries he had acquired since moving. Chris was reading the paper at the table.

"Check it out," Chris said. "You guys are getting the Evanescence reunion tour here next week."

"Please, no one listens to music that old," Penelope said. "Except for you. Because you're old."

"You're right, I'm twenty-one; I'm ancient. Just because the music's old, doesn't make it bad. Anyway, no one ever comes to San Francisco anymore, but at least you'll get concerts here. Maybe Grandpa will let you go."

Penelope grinned at her grandfather, who shook his head and said good-naturedly, "Don't give her ideas, Chris." Indicating the meager spread on the counter, he added, "I think it's going to be either toast or leftover pizza for breakfast, kids."

"I'm good with coffee," Chris said distractedly, reading the paper again.

"No, you're going to eat something before you go."

He grudgingly accepted a slice of cold pizza. When all three had settled at the table, Penelope decided it was time to attack.

"Grandpa, why didn't anyone take pictures of Chris when he was a baby?"

Chris looked up from the newspaper, where he had now started reading what looked like a story about the chaos in San Francisco. Grandpa, startled, said, "What?"

"In this photo album of Mom's, there were all these pictures of Wyatt, and almost none of Chris. It isn't fair."

Grandpa looked between them, both now expecting an answer. "Well," he said slowly, "you know there were … problems around that time. His parents were maybe too busy to be taking photographs. It doesn't mean they loved him any less."

"What problems?" Chris asked.

"With Wyatt."

Penelope could see that Chris was as in the dark as she was.

"No one ever told you," Grandpa said with realization. "Of course not. Why would they? They barely told me anything."

"What did they tell you?" Chris asked.

"All I know is that right before you were born, something happened to Wyatt. Something bad. Something" — he grimaced in disgust — "demonic. I was on one of my long business trips, and your mother didn't contact me, didn't let me know what was going on. By the time I got back, it was over. That's all Piper told me. It was over, and Wyatt was safe; there was nothing to worry about. But I've wondered since then, if maybe ..."

"If maybe the demons got to him," Chris said. "If that was how it started."

Grandpa nodded.

In the silence that followed, Chris gazed at the newspaper article, but he seemed not to see it; instead, he was in some faraway place, taking in the information, turning it over, imagining what it could mean, the possibilities …

He shook himself out of it, and stood up. "I'm sorry, I've really got to go. I'm supposed to be meeting with — with some people it's safer you don't know about." He picked up the piece of pizza, said, "Take care," and orbed out.

Penelope watched the blue lights dissipate, and said, "It still isn't fair."

"No," Grandpa admitted, "it's not. To Chris, or to Wyatt. To any of you kids."

She did not answer, choosing instead to frown at her toast and silently tell herself that she didn't care what had happened to Wyatt. Her mind drifted to Chris's meeting, probably with some dangerous underworld creatures who were helping him and Bianca fight Wyatt. Someday, when she was older, she would join them. Grandpa was going to send her to a regular school, so she'd have to study up on magic on her own. She could do it. She was, after all, daughter of a Charmed One.

"What do you want to do today?" Grandpa broke into her thoughts.

She shrugged. "Unpack some more, I guess."

"Why don't we leave that for later? Let's do something fun. We could go to the aquarium or a movie or …"

"Oh my god, Grandpa, I haven't been shopping in ages! Everything's shut down in San Francisco. Please? I've even got a little money saved up."

"Nope — it'll be my treat. Go on, get ready to go." As she jumped up, he added, "As long as we make sure we stop at the grocery store, too."

"Good idea," she laughed.

"And feed the cat!" he called after her as she scampered upstairs.

In her bedroom, she caught a glimpse of the photo album on the floor, but she tossed aside those thoughts, changed into a robe and headed for the shower. Wyatt's mayhem in San Francisco, Chris's fight, all the troubles of being a Halliwell — they could wait for another day.

**The End**


End file.
